A Matter of Worse or of Better
by Aisa
Summary: Rodolphus Lestrange had known that he would be part of an arranged pureblood couple since he was old enough to grasp the concept of marriage. He and Bellatrix have the potential to be amazing - but if for better or worse, he cannot tell. And as the years go by, he has to watch his truths burn, one by one.


**Disclaimer**: The characters belong to J.K. Rowling, the lyrics are borrowed from Amanda Palmer's incredible "The Bed Song".

**Characters**: Rodolphus and Bellatrix Lestrange

**Summary**: Pureblood marriages are problematic in themselves. But they are more complicated if you are supposed to marry a friend. And for Rodolphus Lestrange, the thought of marrying Bellatrix Black is pure torture.

* * *

Rodolphus had known that he would be part of an arranged pureblood couple since he was old enough to grasp the concept of marriage.

"What's a wedding, dad?", he had asked his father once his parents made plans to marry his elder sister off with the French branch of the Malfoys.

"A wedding is when a man and a woman join for life to keep the blood line pure," his father had explained. Rodolphus had nodded and pretended to know exactly what his dad was talking about.

* * *

He is sixteen when his mother spills the news over dinner.

"Rod, dear, I have talked to Druella. It is fixed now."

"What is fixed, mum?" Rod asks, not really listening, because his younger brother Rabastan is hexing the house elf's ears.

"Your engagement, of course."

"Wait, you have talked to Druella who?"

His mother sadly shakes her head about her son's foolishness. "How many Druellas do we know? Druella Black, who else?"

"But Narcissa is betrothed to Lucius Malfoy… oh!"

He is not able to look Bellatrix in the eye once they return to Hogwarts.

They have been friends since the Sorting Hat had sent them both to Slytherin six years ago. They have played pranks on Gryffindor jerks together, they have laughed at Severus ere they befriended him, he has helped her with Ancient Runes, she has helped him with Potions. They have taught Avery how to dance.

The worst thing is that Rodolphus has been infatuated with her since he was old enough to grasp the concept of having a crush – and he knows exactly that he is nothing more than a pal for Bellatrix.

She will go through with it, of course. She is a good pureblood girl. She does as her parents tell her, if only to make her mother proud. And of course she supports the idea of keeping their bloodlines clean. She even goes as far as saying: "We make quite a striking couple."

And they do. She, with her waist-long black hair, her heavy-lidded eyes and her sensual beauty, he with his thick brown curls, his handsome features and his broad shoulders. They are the dark twin couple of Lucius and Narcissa, who are both fair as spring flowers. They are cunning, skilled, intelligent, witty. They have the potential to be amazing. Needless to say that the Dark Lord approves. He even gives them his blessing: "I appreciate that two of my most loyal servants set out to create a new and perfect dynasty," he says, and these words make Rodolphus proud as well.

And yet, he feels sick as he strolls down the aisle on his wedding day. His stomach revolts as he puts the fragile diamond ring on Bellatrix' slender finger.

"It was a nice wedding, wasn't it?" she says when the celebration is over. She says it as if she is talking about the wedding of strangers, and the comment makes Rodolphus' skin crawl.

The thought of their wedding night has made him nervous for weeks.

He had desired his wife for years, and now she is his. He can touch her and kiss her without a bad conscience, without embarrassment.

He undresses her and beholds her without touching her. Her waist is slim, so are her hips – almost too slim to bear children. Her breasts are small, and his fingers trace her nipples before he can stop himself.

Bellatrix smiles and says: "Well then, let's get to work."

Let's get to work. _Work_. She considers their wedding night as _work_. Her words make him so angry that he forgets all the gentleness he has ever connected with lovemaking. Their first night together is raw, but to his (and her) utter surprise, she seems to take pleasure out of his lack of tenderness. In the pale light of the early morning hours, they lie next to each other, silently.

It doesn't matter that they have both enjoyed the night. Rodolphus knows that his wife is quietly praying for the seed to reach its aim so they won't have to repeat the deed too often. He knows that she has imagined another man's face over her, but whether this face belongs to the Dark Lord or somebody else he cannot tell.

And he also knows that she will never lose a word about it to him, because they are still friends, and even though she has not married him for love, she does not intend to hurt him.

As the sun climbs over the horizon, he cannot lie next to her anymore. He escapes the bed and quietly, dressed only in a thin pair of shorts, finds shelter in his sheet music and the piano keys – the only place in the world where black and white were easy to separate.

Bellatrix' prayers find a merciful ear. Two months later she vomits during breakfast for, and when the nurse in St. Mungo's confirms their suspicion ("Congratulations, Madame Lestrange, you're having a baby!"), they embrace each other, and for the first they actually feel like a married couple. For the first and only time, they are happy together. They laugh together, think of baby names and find a steady rhythm at night that satisfies them both and could almost be called lovemaking.

They have the potential to be _amazing_ – a good or a bad kind of amazing? Rodolphus cannot tell. But in those weeks, he is happier than ever before, and he _knows_ that the Lestranges are a good team. An astounding couple.

Bellatrix loses the child a few weeks later. The bed is full of blood, and Rodolphus cannot help but wondering whether her excessive use of the Unforgivables has led to her miscarriage.

For the first time since he has met her, she weeps relentlessly for the child she has lost. She wraps herself into the blanket, as if it was a cave she intended to hide in for the rest of her life. She won't let him touch her. So he strikes her back through the blanket and plays songs for their unborn (and her) on the piano and wishes that she would let him comfort her properly.

"_And I lay there wondering what is the matter  
Is this a matter of worse or of better  
You took the blanket so I took the bed sheet  
But I would have held you if you'd only let me."_

Three years into their marriage, Rodolphus feels like he is in a hardcore version of his 7th year at Hogwarts. They live together, they scheme together, they practice curses together, they attend the Dark Lord's meetings together. They are partners in crime, as they have always been. The rings on their fingers are mere decoration. They fuck twice a week (yes, they fuck. Rodolphus cannot remember the last time they made love – maybe before the second miscarriage) to satisfy their physical needs – that's what you have a spouse for in an arranged marriage, when you can't make the offspring happen, right? – but there is little tenderness between them. They do not talk about how they feel when they go out to hunt down muggles and mudbloods. They do not talk about the humiliation when they failed to satisfy the Dark Lord's wishes completely and end up screeching with pain from a well-placed _Cruciatus_.

They don't talk about Bellatrix' two other miscarriages, or about his losing the will to try to have a family. They also don't talk about the name she mumbles in her sleep, even though Rodolphus is sure that she knows that he knows.

They do talk about their appearance, though. The ministry has not fallen yet. Being a Death Eater still equals being a terrorist. They are illegal, so they need to put some effort into to image they present to the world.

He works for Gringotts. She is a skilled healer at St. Mungo's – for the gynaecology ward, of all wars. Both of them are in the _Daily Prophet_ at least twice a month – he with the goblins, she with chubby newborns. They appear at benefit dinners and donate money for the hospital, for London's Wizardry University and for Hogwarts.

It is a cleverly constructed picture: The healer, who is more often than not called from the gynaecology to the emergency room to treat the cursed aurors she has injured herself the previous night, and the banker, who secretly directs money to equip his fellow Death Eaters with expensive and rare poisons to blur the traces.

It takes time and effort to maintain the picture. And in the few nights they spend at home, they lie in a bed that seems too big, quietly, and stare at the ceiling. Rodolphus feels lonely. He works for the Dark Lord's approval, but he sees the Dark Lord only once a week, and he longs for a bit more intimacy with his partner-in-crime. With his wife. With his friend.

One night, he reaches for Bellatrix's hand. She does not pull away, but she does not react either, and Rodolphus _knows_ that she feels uncomfortable next to him. But she feels lonely, too, and so he does not let go of her hand. They fall asleep hand in hand, and as he wakes up at dawn, he is surprised that her fingers are still entwined.

As the war rages on, he feels that his wife's sanity is slipping through her fingers. All she wants is the Dark Lord's approval. His respect. She hungers for it, as if it was all that would keep her from falling into a deep hole.

It scares Rodolphus. He, too, admires the Dark Lord, but he fears him as well. He fears what he is doing to this country.

And as the news spread through the land on that fatal morning of November 1st, 1981, Rodolphus finds a weird notion of relief beneath his initial shock and disbelief. The Dark Lord is gone. Finished by a toddler. All they have worked for in the past few years lies in ashes – but nobody knows what they have worked for. Nobody has accused them. They have the chance to move on with their lives. It will be hard, of course, but they have been given a chance.

But there is a strange light in Bellatrix' eyes. She has not shed a single tear – she is too devastated to cry. She lies awake at night. "He is not gone," she mumbles, again and again. "He is not gone, he _cannot_ be gone! We have to find him!"

And for the first time since the night after they found out about her first pregnancy, Rodolphus takes her in his arms and cradles her head and kisses her messy hair. He could move on with his life – but he _knows_ that she can't. And he won't move on without her. They are friends after all. Spouses. Partners-in-crime. And lovers, maybe.

"We _will_ find him, Bella."

_"And I stood there wondering what is the matter  
Is this a matter of worse or of better  
You walked right past me and straightened the covers  
But I would still love you if you wanted a lover."_

He should have known that it would be a bad idea to hunt down the Longbottoms. He should have known that they did not know anything about the Dark Lord's whereabouts. He should have known that two aurors like Frank and Alice had the right temper and sharp tongues to drive Bellatrix and Barty over the edge. There was nothing Rodolphus or Rabastan could have done when Bella and Barty lost control over themselves. Even Rodolphus himself had to admit that they deserved their sentence for Azkaban after Frank and Alice would not even remember their own names.

Nothing could have prepared him for the dementor-pested hell of Azkaban. In this hole, even the most half-hearted Death Eater would have started to tell himself that he did everything to ensure the Dark Lord's return, just to take revenge, and neither Bellatrix nor Rodolphus are half-hearted. The bright burning flame in their hearts heaves them through these fourteen years, even though they barely recognize themselves when they finally manage to break out. They are still alive, and the Dark Lord lives, and they will be _honoured_!

But as they have managed to stay halfway sane in Azkaban, the Dark Lord has obviously lost his mind on his way back from the not-quite-dead. Rodolphus knows that Bellatrix is still attracted to his power, but Rodolphus himself, after he escapes Azkaban a second time, only does not leave the Death Eaters because he has no other place to go anymore. His brother and his wife are still here, so he will stay as well. But he feels just as shitty as Lucius looks like, and he displays the enthusiasm of one Severus Snape – maybe even less, if that is possible.

And for the first time he wonders: Was it all worth it?

Hell, no. It wasn't. But who cares?

They take the ministry, they take Britain. They almost take Harry Potter, but that one never quite worked out.

They attack Hogwarts, and Rodolphus watches his old school burn as he steps over the corpses of children who tried to defend their home-for-seven-years.

They retreat to the forest, and they all gasp in disbelief as Harry Potter practically throws himself into the Dark Lord's arms to die.

Rodolphus should have known that it was a bluff. The boy-who-lived was harder to kill than a cat with eighteen lives. And as Potter actually turns out to be alive, Rodolphus knows that Bellatrix will burst with rage. To his surprise, though, her first reaction resembles his own: She lets out a deep sigh, her shoulders fall, the passion fades from her eyes and her exhausted face speaks volumes: Do we _really_ have to hunt the kid once more? Does it _never_ stop?

And then the madness returns and she leaps forward to attack the Weasley girl.

Rodolphus is too tired to fight. He tries to keep Narcissa's back free as she looks for her son. His sister-in-law seems to be one of the few people he knows who really haven't lost their minds yet.

Rodolphus himself isn't quite sure anymore whether he is sane or not, what he knows and what he doesn't know. All his truths are burning and turning to ashes, along with the walls of Hogwarts.

He returns to the Great Hall just in time to witness Bellatrix duelling with Molly Weasley. He clenches his teeth and irrationally hopes that his wife will kill the old mother hen – if only because she and her shameful blood traitor husband managed to produce a whole house full of children without even trying, while he and Bellatrix had to deal with the pain of three miscarriages.

But Molly Weasley strikes his wife with a clean _Avada Kedavra_, right in the chest, and Rodolphus thinks that the Order of the Phoenix is barely better than the Death Eaters. They use the Unforgivables as well, they murder just as well. He spends the (short) rest of the battle defending his wife's corpse. If he's lucky, he'll be able to arrange a proper funeral from out of Azkaban. They shall not toss her body away, like they did with the Dark Lord's corpse. He will not let them toss her body away like a piece of waste. She was his friend, after all. His wife. His partner-in-crime.

_"And I finally ask you what was the matter  
Was it a matter of worse or of better  
You stretch your arms out and finally face me  
You say I would have told you if you'd only asked me  
if you'd only asked me  
if you'd only asked me."_

He is allowed to say farewell before they take him back to prison. He closes her eyes – those empty eyes that stare at him full of surprise, like they have stared at Molly Weasley a few hours earlier. He takes the locket from her neck and opens it with stiff fingers. He expects it to be empty, but instead of air, he finds a crumpled picture, barely moving. The kind of picture they took in the gynaecology at St. Mungo's to locate an unborn baby's heart. _Their_ unborn baby's heart. He had not known that she had cared enough to save this picture through the hell of Azkaban and everything that came afterwards. May 1978, it says in the backside, in Bellatrix's narrow handwriting. And next to the picture, a crumpled note, saying. "You never _knew _how much I loved you."

Rodolphus stares down at the small letters. He doesn't know whom the note is addressed at – the baby? Him? The Dark Lord? The mysterious other man? - , or why his wife had written it at all. It takes him a while to find out what exactly is perplexing him so much.

He is already on the boat back to Azkaban, shivering in the cold wind, clutching the locket to his chest when he realizes it.

He had never known that Bellatrix – his friend-lover-wife-partner-in-crime – could love at all.

And as they take him back into the dementor-pested hell, there is a smile on his face.


End file.
